This attitude may account for the disposition in some quarters to deny Mulcaster any special originality in regard to his leading principles. But in a subject like education, which concerns so many departments of life and character, what is the precise meaning of originality? As the essential traits of human nature have remained unaltered in the last two or three thousand years, except for a slow development along lines in continuity with the past, it is vain to expect that the broader truths which underlie the arts of social improvement will be subject to any radical change. In such matters we must build on the wisdom of the ancients, and the only possible originality consists in discerning the new applications that are suited to the present time and place. It is safe to say that there is hardly a single educational doctrine that has ever won acceptance, the germs of which are not to be found in the writings of Plato and Aristotle. Yet every age and every country must work out its own salvation by choosing, combining, and applying to its needs the general principles that have been laid down by those that came before. Such eclecticism, if it cannot strictly be called originality, is at least the highest wisdom, and he who first proclaims the doctrine as true for his own time and place deserves the credit of the pioneer. The discoveries of the Greek philosophers in social politics, if discoveries they could be called, had to be made over again for the modern world, and it may even be said that they had to be made independently for each separate country. In the sixteenth century there was less uniformity in political and social conditions, and less mutual influence among the different States of Europe than there is now. Although the English nation under Elizabeth could not remain wholly unaffected by the more drastic changes of opinion and sentiment that marked the course of the reforming spirit in Germany and in Scotland, it certainly demanded a rare sagacity and independence of mind, if not absolute originality, to discern how far the new outlook could be shared by those whose experience had been less revolutionary. To understand the value of Mulcaster’s work it is of less moment to ask what may have been his indebtedness to Plato or Quintilian, or even to Luther and Knox, than to consider whether he had been directly anticipated by any of his own countrymen, and whether he himself anticipated, if he did not influence, later English writers on education.